-race: a social construct created by Europeans during the
process of colonization in the early modern period which divided human beings
into distinct hierarchical groupings and used science to rationalize
discriminatory and oppressive practices (see below)

-race prejudice: prejudice focused on race

-bigotry: negative prejudice involving feeling of superiority

-race bigotry: bigotry based on race

Institution: an
organization of human activity that gives a context of legitimacy vs.
illegitimacy for what people do

-conventional
legitimacy: what the dominant social
group decides is appropriate and right and enforces through institutions

-moral legitimacy: what moral reasoning prescribes as appropriate and
right and proposes for adoption and enforcement by institutions

Power: means of achieving or
maintaining something

-power as
violence: illegitimate use of force
to gain or maintain something

-power as
manipulation: underhanded, sneaky way
of gaining or maintaining something

-power as
institutional: use of socially (i.e.,
conventionally) legitimate institutions to gain or maintain something

-empowerment: helping someone find their own means of gaining or
maintaining something

-disempowerment:
taking away or denying someone's access to the means of gaining or maintaining
something on their own.

Racism* = Race Prejudice + Institutional
Power: the (conscious or unconscious) use of institutional power to
maintain unequal status and superiority over others on the basis of the race
construct

-racism as
results oriented: racism is not
simply about intent, but results, since the dominant social group benefits from
race prejudice (through power) whether it is bigoted or not

-racism as
institutional: racism is not about
individuals personally and consciously seeking gain, but about institutional
arrangements which perpetuate domination based on race.

Racist: one whose actions flow from and
whose status and privilege is bolstered by racially supremacist attitudes or
principles, whether or not the person acts this way intentionally

-racist attitude: a conscious or unconscious supremacist belief which
creates a tendency to act, however subtle, on supremacist principles

-racist action: any action
which has its origin in supremacist ideology, whether or not the actor is aware
of the supremacism

Internalized Racist Oppression (Barbara Major and Kenneth Jones): IRO is the
internalization by people of color (POC) of the images, stereotypes, prejudices
and myths promoted by the racist system about POC in this country. Our thoughts
and feelings about ourselves, people of our own racial group or other POC are
based on these racist messages we receive from the broaders system. It is a
multi-generational process.

Internalized Racial Superiority(Diana Dunn):
IRS is a multigenerational process of receiving, acting on, internalizing,
invisibilizing, and legitimizing a system of privilege.

Anti-Racism: more than an
intellectual opposition to the principles of racial supremacy, it is the recognition
of racism as part of institutional structures and the struggle to stop power
and gain based on racism and/or race bigotry

Anti-Racist Organizer: an individual who is not only struggling against
institutional racism, but also seeking other anti-racists and creating
organizations and networks of organizations to oppose racism in a systematic
way

____________________________

*The definition of racism offered here is
based on the work of The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, New Orleans,
LA. For more information, contact David Billings at (504) 944-2354. There are
two relevant books to look at: Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington, Undoing
Racism: A Philosophy of International Social Change, 2nd ed.
(People's Institute Press, 1997) and Joseph Barndt, Dismantling Racism: The
Continuing Challenge to White America (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991).